Ottawa’s Pension Gap: The Growing and Under-reported Cost of Federal Employee Pensions

The federal government’s unfunded  liabilities for its employee pension plans  total $227 billion, far more than reported, according to a report released today by the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Ottawa’s Pension Gap: The Growing and Under-reported Cost of Federal Employee Pensions,” authors Alexandre Laurin and William Robson find that, using fair-value accounting like private-sector plans which value assets and liabilities using current market prices and interest rates, Ottawa’s unfunded employee pension obligations are $80 billion more than reported in the Public Accounts.